Update: Breaking news on September 22. Nvidia announces plans to invest up to $100B in OpenAI for AI infrastructure, potentially making it the largest single investment in AI history.
Is it even possible to raise a mega-round without AI anymore? In 2025, yes, if you have a GLP-1 play. Just 3 of the top 50 rounds we tracked as of September 19 went to apparent non-AI/automation plays. But two of those, Group14 (battery materials) and Odyssey Therapeutics, employ automated manufacturing or AI-driven drug discovery respectively. The sole potential exception was Verdiva Bio ($411M), the developer of an oral GLP-1 peptide drug for obesity. The rest? A parade of model builders like OpenAI ($40B), Anthropic ($13B) and xAI ($10B) and AI data companies like Scale AI ($14.3B). Beyond the fold, there’s metaverse/AI plays like Infinite Reality ($3B), defense autonomy like Anduril ($2.5B) and humanoid robotics like Figure ($1B+).
In 2025, the center of gravity for mega-rounds has been unambiguously AI. OpenAI’s $40 billion raise at a $300 billion valuation on March 31 was the largest private round on record. What followed clustered around two patterns: strategic control of AI inputs and scaled bets on compute-intensive frontiers. On the inputs side, Meta’s purchase of a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion (while bringing their CEO in house to help lead their new Superintelligence Labs, though he remains on Scale’s board) gave a large platform direct leverage over data and annotation.
Nvidia announced on September 22 a letter of intent to invest up to $100B in OpenAI, focused on deploying at least 10 gigawatts of compute capacity. This would dwarfs even OpenAI’s prior $40B raise from March, potentially bringing their total 2025 funding to $140B. The investment will be incremental, tied to infrastructure deployment milestones, with the first phase expected in H2 2026.
Musk’s xAI secured $10 billion at a $200 billion valuation, using a hybrid $5 billion debt and $5 billion equity structure. The company’s Colossus supercomputer, already the world’s largest AI training system with 200,000 GPUs built in just 122 days, is expanding toward 1 million GPUs. In July, Meta announced it would build Hyperion, a $10B data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana potentially requiring 5 Gigawatts of power.
The pricing power rankings
In terms of the companies getting the best terms, the valuation-to-funding ratio is a quick proxy for pricing power: how much post-money valuation each company commanded per dollar of fresh capital. By that yardstick, Figure, the humanoid robotics company backed by Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI, sits on top at roughly 39× (about a $39 billion valuation on a little over $1 billion raised). One of their humanoids is pictured on the right. Their funding sum sits well ahead of Elon Musk’s xAI, maker of the Grok chatbot and operator of one of the world’s largest AI training clusters, at 20× ($200 billion on $10 billion).
Quantinuum, the quantum computing joint venture between Honeywell and Cambridge Quantum Computing, commanded around 16.7× ($10 billion on $600 million). Safe Superintelligence, the AI alignment startup founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, achieved roughly 16× ($32 billion on $2 billion) despite having no product and an explicit focus on building AGI safely rather than quickly. Even Anthropic, maker of Claude and arguably OpenAI’s closest competitor, trails at 14× ($183 billion on $13 billion).
Funding is concentrated in terms of both timing and startups
The monthly funding cadence shows capital bunching around infrastructure announcements and model milestones. March’s OpenAI close, June’s defense/data surges and September’s cluster of frontier-compute financings as of September 19 were clear spikes. This temporal clustering mirrors the geographic concentration: The Bay Area accounted for nearly 70% of all VC investment in Q1 alone, with San Francisco pulling in $55 billion. The pattern suggests a feedback loop. When OpenAI raises $40 billion on March 31, it triggers a cascade of defensive financings from competitors and complementary infrastructure plays, all radiating from the same few square miles in San Francisco. By September, with xAI’s $10 billion raise and Anthropic’s $13 billion Series F, the market had settled into a rhythm: massive checks written to a handful of companies, in a handful of months, from a handful of zip codes.
50 of the best funded R&D-focused startups in 2025, YTD
| Rank | Company | Amount | Valuation | Sector | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OpenAI | $40,000M | $300B | AI Foundation Models | Mar 31 • Investors: SoftBank, Thrive Capital, Microsoft • Largest private fundraise in history • Sources |
| 2 | Scale AI | $14,300M | $29B+ | AI Data Infrastructure | Jun 10 • Investor: Meta (49% strategic stake) • Sources |
| 3 | Anthropic | $13,000M | $183B | AI Safety | Sep 2 • Investors: Amazon, Google, others • Series F; Largest of two 2025 rounds • Source |
| 4 | xAI | $10,000M | $200B | Generative AI | Sep 19 • Investors: Various • Structure: $5B debt + $5B equity • Source |
| 5 | Infinite Reality | $3,000M | $12.25B | Metaverse/AI | Jan 8 • Investor: Single strategic investor • Source |
| 6 | Anduril Industries | $2,500M | $30.5B | Defense AI | Jun 5 • Investor: Founders Fund ($1B, largest check ever) • Source |
| 7 | Thinking Machines Lab | $2,000M | $12B | AI Research | Jul • Seed round; Largest seed in Silicon Valley history • Founder: Mira Murati (ex-OpenAI CTO) • Source |
| 8 | Safe Superintelligence | $2,000M | $32B | AI Alignment | Apr • Investors: a16z, Sequoia, DST • Founder: Ilya Sutskever (ex-OpenAI) • Source |
| 9 | Mistral AI | $2,000M | $14B | LLMs | Sep • Investors: Various European • €1.7B round; French AI champion • Source |
| 10 | Databricks | $1,000M | $100B+ | Data & AI Platform | Sep • Series K; Preparing for potential IPO • Source |
| 11 | Figure | $1,000M+ | $39B | Humanoid Robotics | Sep 16 • Investors: Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI • Series C; 15x valuation jump from 2024 • Sources |
| 12 | PsiQuantum | $1,000M | $7B | Quantum Computing | Sep 10 • Investors: NVIDIA, others • Series E • Source |
| 13 | Anysphere | $900M | $9.9B | AI Developer Tools | Jun 5 • Investors: Thrive Capital, a16z • Cursor AI; >$500M ARR • Source |
| 14 | Commonwealth Fusion | $863M | N/A | Fusion Energy | Aug 28 • Investors: Google, NVIDIA, Gates • Series B2 • Source |
| 15 | Groq | $750M | $6.9B | AI Chips | Sep 17 • Investors: Disruptive ($350M), BlackRock • LPU inference engine • Sources |
| 16 | TerraPower | $650M | N/A | Nuclear Energy | Jun 18 • Investors: Bill Gates, NVIDIA, HD Hyundai • Source |
| 17 | Harvey | $600M | $5B | Legal AI | Jun 23 • Sum of two $300M rounds (Series D + E) • Investors: Kleiner Perkins, Coatue • Sources |
| 18 | Quantinuum | $600M | $10B | Quantum Computing | Sep 4 • Investor: JPMorgan Chase • Series B; Honeywell-Cambridge JV • Source |
| 19 | Isomorphic Labs | $600M | N/A | AI Drug Discovery | Mar 31 • Investors: Thrive Capital, Alphabet • Alphabet’s drug discovery unit • Source |
| 20 | Applied Intuition | $600M | $15B | Autonomous Vehicles | Jun 17 • Investors: BlackRock, Kleiner Perkins • Series F • Source |
| 21 | Saronic | $600M | $4B | Maritime Defense | Feb 19 • Investors: Elad Gil, a16z • Series C • Source |
| 22 | Abridge | $550M | $5.3B | Healthcare AI | Feb/Jun • Combined Series D ($250M) + E ($300M) • Investors: a16z, Khosla • Source |
| 23 | Cohere | $500M | $6.8B | Enterprise AI | Aug 14 • Investors: AMD, NVIDIA, Salesforce • Sources |
| 24 | Lambda | $480M | $2.5B | AI Infrastructure | Feb 19 • Investors: Andra Capital, SGW, NVIDIA • Series D • Source |
| 25 | Group14 Technologies | $463M | N/A | Battery Technology | Aug 20 • Series D; Silicon-carbon battery materials • Source |
| 26 | SandboxAQ | $450M | $5.75B | Quantum+AI Security | Apr 4 • Series E; Alphabet spinoff • Source |
| 27 | Helion Energy | $425M | $5.4B | Fusion Energy | Jan 28 • Series F; Sam Altman personal investment • Source |
| 28 | Verdiva Bio | $411M | N/A | Biotechnology | Jan 9 • Series A; Obesity drug developer; Flagship Pioneering • Source |
| 29 | Field AI | $405M | $2B | Robotics AI | Aug 20 • Investors: Bill Gates, Bezos Expeditions • Source |
| 30 | Apptronik | $403M | N/A | Humanoid Robotics | Feb/Mar • Series A extended • Investors: B Capital, Google, Mercedes • Source |
| 31 | Eikon Therapeutics | $351M | N/A | Drug Discovery | Feb 26 • Series D; Live-cell imaging • Source |
| 32 | IQM Quantum | $320M | $1B | Quantum Computing | Sep 3 • Series B; Achieved unicorn status • Source |
| 33 | Kriya Therapeutics | $320M | N/A | Gene Therapy | Sep 10 • Series D; Gene therapies for diabetes/obesity • Source |
| 34 | Runway | $308M | $3B | Generative Media | Apr 3 • Investors: General Atlantic, NVIDIA • Source |
| 35 | Together AI | $305M | $3.3B | AI Infrastructure | Feb 20 • Investors: Prosperity7, General Catalyst • Source |
| 36 | Perplexity AI | $300M | $20B | AI Search | Jul/Sep • Investors: Various institutional • Combined 2025 rounds |
| 37 | Divergent Technologies | $290M | $2.3B | Advanced Manufacturing | May • Investor: Founders Fund • 3D printing for automotive |
| 38 | OpenEvidence | $285M | $3.5B | Medical AI | Feb/Jul • Investors: Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures • Source |
| 39 | Stoke Space | $260M | N/A | Space Launch | Jan 15 • Investors: Breakthrough Energy, Y Combinator • Source |
| 40 | True Anomaly | $260M | N/A | Space Defense | Apr 30 • Investors: Space Force VC, Blizzard Capital • Series C |
| 41 | Mainspring Energy | $258M | N/A | Clean Energy | Apr 14 • Investors: General Catalyst, Amazon Climate Fund • Source |
| 42 | Celestial AI | $250M | $2.5B | Photonic Chips | Mar 11 • Investors: Fidelity, Tiger Global, BlackRock • Source |
| 43 | Epirus | $250M | N/A | Defense Tech | Mar 5 • Investors: 8VC, L3 Harris • Series D; Directed energy weapons |
| 44 | Ambience Healthcare | $243M | $1B+ | Healthcare AI | Jul 29 • Investors: Oak HC/FT, a16z • Source |
| 45 | Shield AI | $240M | $5.3B | Defense AI | Mar 6 • Investors: L3Harris, Hanwha, a16z • F-1 round |
| 46 | QuEra Computing | $230M | $1.1B | Quantum Computing | Feb 11 • Investors: Google, Rakuten, Day One • Source |
| 47 | Odyssey Therapeutics | $213M | N/A | Biotechnology | Sep 10 • Investors: Affinity, Dimension Capital • Source |
| 48 | Neko Health | $200M | $1.5B | Preventive Health | Jul 10 • Investors: Lakestar, GV (Alphabet) • Source |
| 49 | Varda Space | $200M | $1.2B | Space Manufacturing | Apr 16 • Investors: B Capital, Lux Capital • Source |
| 50 | ElevenLabs | $180M | $3.3B | Voice AI | Jan 30 • Investors: a16z, ICONIQ Growth • Source |
